Typical Slashdot ignorance. Please submit a list of the books your written where the publisher cleared the title with you.
It's not so much who chose the title as who's currently the asshole. Penguin just changed the name of the book; Tarbox has a creep of a lawyer who's harassing Katie Jones.
So currently it looks like Tarbox's lawyer is the ass here. If that doesn't reflect Tarbox, she needs a new lawyer.
Hrm... I think if you read a bit more carefully, as you'd see that she is located in the UK... I don't think that USPTO searches will help in that case.
It doesn't matter that she's in the UK because 1) Penguin's the one claiming rights (and they'd register everywhere if necessary, being an international company), 2) these things are generally protected by international treaty and 3), I couldn't find it in the UK either.
Seems like Penguin doesn't have the rights they think they do. And I don't believe book titles are automatically trademarked - I've seem some that were, making me believe the rest likely aren't by default.
Considering the whole point is she was a kid who got abused by a pedophile, I think the longest thing she probably ever wrote was a social studies term paper.
because her best chance of winning this in court (bearing in mind that there has only been one previous legal precedent and the legality is still a little muddy) is to prove that she is not keeping ownership of the domain to "cash in on" or deliberately adversely affect the book or the publishers' reputation.
She probably won't take this to court from her own statements on the matter, so a nice evil PR campaign might work really well. Especially since she shouldn't face any of the "cybersquatter" rules that get domains turned over - after all, she 1) registered it practically in the stone age (1996, before Katie T. was molested or whatever), and 2) did so in good faith, using it for a personal site before it became useless as such.
Penguin clearly hasn't acted in good faith, I see no reason why she should. Goatse it is!
An addendum: Apple has worked damn hard to get the record labels to get on board with this while giving end users reasonable liberties with the music they paid for. This effort by Real undermines this process and will only serve to make record labels more unwilling to participate in electronic delivery and dissemination of media.
First, that would only make sense the other way around - it would undermine the process if Real found a way to get Apple's media easily working on a non-locked-down player (not to mention which this is possible anyway). Getting more music to work on the ipod doesn't undermine anything from a DRM standpoint.
And competition is a good thing. If this undercuts apple from a market share standpoint 1) that's good, because it means Real brought something to the table to compete with apple, and 2) it means that customers are still getting record-company-approved music from Real. Note this isn't about piracy, as one can encode pirated music and play that on your ipod anyway. This is about getting another DRM'd format working on the ipod, which record companies can't but love. In other words, this is in no way bad for the industry OR consumers. It's only bad for apple's monopoly.
I know the pro-apple crowd here thinks that only Apple can bring music to the masses, but their (admittedly very good) first foray into music only buys them time. Expecting all other companies to hand them a permanant monopoly is absolutely mindless. Expecting all content to be explicitly tied to a specific hardware platform is pretty dumb; expecting the opposite (as you and Apple do) is indefensible.
Disclaimer: I'm an apple owner. But it doesn't mean I have to rubber-stamp everything the company does.
Like the grandparent post, I think that ultimately Apple's case is pretty weak, unless Real actually cracked anything. And even there, Apple's case is not so clear cut, because there are exceptions for software interoperablility.
We shall see - first, I think Apple will be able to convince judges that their device doesn't run "software" in the traditional sense. My DVD player runs some software too...kind of...and we all see how that one plays out. I think they'll easily get around any "software compatibility" considerations. Second, they're bigger and their lawyers can beat up Real's, so that's what really matters here.
From the company's perspective, they've got to preserve the thing they got going on. What if they let it go and then MS buys Real?
That's an interesting consideration. Yeah, that should give Apple enough motivation.
As far as the legal situation is concerned, I think Apple has nothing to stand on. As long as Real doesn't do anything to allow consumers to copy copyrighted works, Real can reverse engineer to their heart's content, and so can any iPod competitors. They can't, however, "steal" Apple's copyrighted code and/or copy anything Apple has patents for, which should be just certain aspects of the iPod interface.
That makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it makes too much sense for it to be legal these days. If Real officially "decrypted" or "reverse engineered" anything to get this hack working (like, say, a BIOS), then Apple can wave the spectre of the DMCA at them, as the article mentions. In fact, I'd say Apple has a decent shot of winning, and a great shot of using the threat of litigation to beat Real into submission.
I mean, Christ on a crutch, it's a pretty simple device... Not like every electronics company hasn't already made something similar. It shouldn't be too difficult at all to make something iPod compatible.
There you go being all logical again. You're going to have to work on that if you want to improve your grasp of the current American legal system.;)
As a bit of an aside, how much more evidence will it take to convince Congress that no, really, the DMCA is completely anticompetitive? We have printer cartridges, DVD's, PS2 mod chips, this...what next? Is the entire concept of competition for aftermarket support a myth these days?
...was one from MS saying you'd better log into Hotmail once a month or they would delete all your email. I figured that was even dickheaded for MS - I mean, an extended vacation and you lose all your email. I assumed that the $19.95 "upgrade" link, while it looked good, must have been obfuscated somehow and was redirected to a "lookalike" site.
So I got 9/10 because MS is an even bigger bunch of assholes than I'd have thought. Wow.
Then later, when SDRAM was popular and they introduced their own competing prodcut they said "Oh look what we found in our back pocket: patents! We own all the RAM and you all have to pay us royalties". Ya, well that went over like not at all, and Rambus lost their claims related to that.
First, as already mentioned, Rambus won. So that kind of nixes your point. Fortunately, that was about patents - not copyrights - and additionally, the committee that SCO and Novell was a part of actually granted a license.
Same stable slack. My only complaints is that it could be better at recognizing devices - changing kernel config based on detected sound card wouldn't be hard, nor putting the correct 3 lines in XF86Config for a 3-button mouse.
But that's slack. No bloat. Anywhere. You want it bloated, punk, you put it in your frikking self.
"But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. "
A bit of thread if not topic, but any idea which "laws" this violates? Just Pauli, or others? Is this "information" bit tied to Hawking's proving that black holes aren't singularities, or are they different points?
And, it did make a difference. Ask the people who are more-free now if the accumulated actions of a minority made a difference to make everyone better off in the long run. One person can make a difference, especially if by their actions they might influence some others. One person being complacent, going along to get along, always shoving off problems for someone else to deal with, leads to stagnation and the rule of the bully and the criminal, in business, in government, on the internet, in your neighborhood-everywhere. You start being a non victim by stopping being a victim, on a small matter or a large matter. You just say "no" to trading money for being a victim.
What a bunch of Tony Robbinsish buzzword, feel-good crap. Nobody outside of protesters gives a shit about protesters unless they're breaking/disrupting shit. And if they do that, they lose public sympathy and thus their effectiveness.
Policy change, when it occurs, comes from effective people who get in the faces - literally - of policy makers. It comes from people who can lead real movements, not this hippie protest crap. If you want to make a difference, do so. But don't feel like you shouldn't feel guilty about doing nothing because you marched somewhere. That shit doesn't accomplish anything.
I totally agree, but your solution isn't a realistic one. That's only a great way to LOSE your job. The best thing for companies to do is to pay for any cell phone charges that were caused by after hours work. If they are really generous, they could also pay for a percentage of your internet cost if you use it from home. Either that, or just write it off as "needed for work" for tax purposes;)
I really don't mean to seem flip - I am in the job market, so I know how hard it is to find such a job - but this might be time to look for another job. When companies start down this road, it's a sign of one (or two) of two things: 1) an insufferable, micromanaging, pennywise/pound-foolish tight-assed, non-caring boss, or 2) a company that's in such dire financial straits that they're looking for any avenue to save money. You don't want to work for a boss like that, and if the company is in such financial trouble in a generally improving economy, they're not in good shape.
If it were me, I'd start looking for a job, updating the resume, etc. After I started finding job prospects, I'd be tempted to tell them that since I used broadband primarily for work, I'm dropping it. See how they respond.
But I agree with you, pissing off your employer is never a good idea, and when you don't have another job lined up, it's a really bad idea.
...some people just want to use software. It doesn't have to be a cause.
As for you marching, whatever makes you feel better. If it did, it was logical. If you really think you made a difference in policy decisions, you didn't.
I think the i-line of products or e-line of products might be more what your looking for. Or you could just settle for something else.
I would have owned a mac years before I finally bought one had they been more affordable. What this comes down to is market segmentation - the ability to maintain margins at the high end without abandoning the low end. Doing this effectively is unquestionably a good thing.
If Apple neglects the low end, it is because they don't think they can maintain margins on their better toys if they go for the cheaper market.
But at the point where there are millions of people who would legitimately get a mac if there was a cheaper one available...well...
I'd rather use those CPU cycles for something worthwhile i think...
First, people say this every damned time an improvement is made to a GUI. If anybody listened, we'd all still be using CLI exclusively. Second, most people using their 3 GHz machine for office work most certainly DO have the spare cycles.
Additionally, it looks like the improvements will really make a usability difference in how we interact with the UI. Keeping notes on an application window, tilting the windows to keep most of the perceptual information (btw, using foreshortening to effectively compress windows is a great idea), making multiple desktops more perceptual, etc are all good ideas that will help people interact more intelligently with their programs.
I think this is a great start, and with some tightening and more well-implemented ideas, I can't wait to see this in a mainstream OS.
I'm trying to remember where I saw the article - maybe it was here, but the English had an electronic computer for breaking the Enigma codes in WWII before we Yanks had one. I wonder if Goldstine heard about the British one and knew that we needed one too?
In general, the Brit version was a good bit less powerful and dedicated to it's purpose - not so much of a "computer" as we'd think of them, more like a very complicated, electronic adding machine.
Not to take away from the accomplishment though - brilliant and served its purpose rather well (obviously, since I write this post in English not Deutsch).
It would be different with think tanks because they are not trying to be unbiased agents of the truth. Instead, they are lobbiests trying to acheive goals in a specific area. The funds they receive don't need to be disclosed because it should be obvious that they are from source on a single side of an issue.
That's certainly not what they represent, and they actually go out of their way not to seem biased or bought.
Incidentally, if you look at other large sponsors of these agencies, you'll see other funding sources they have in common besides Microsoft. It's not like MS is the sole, driving force behind these organizations.
No one's claiming that MS is the sole client of these companies. The main point is just that 1) These think tanks are shills, and 2) The groups saying nice things about MS are paid by MS.
They're kind of like hookers - they'll "satisfy" whoever pays them enough.
If you were a pointy-haired boss and your IT guys wanted you to read an article on Linux Today and you see those ads panning Linux are you going to be swayed by the article any at all? Most likely not, as the ads have given you the preconceived notion going into the article that Linux costs more than the Microsoft stuff you're already using.
If your boss puts more faith in a sponsored ad than your recommendation, you'd best be checking Monster pretty soon. Also, linuxtoday isn't really the best place to send newbies to learn about linux anyway.
As far as the rest of us, it seems to me that linuxtoday trusts its reader base enough to realize the FUD for what it is. Personally, I love the irony.
The only question is will it ever compromise their journalistic integrity? I doubt it.
From the SCO press release: " The conversion will occur as permitted under SCO's Certificate of Designation, Preferences and Rights relating to the Series A-1 stock. The Series A-1 stock was purchased at a price of $1,000 per share, and will be converted to common stock based on a conversion price of $13.50 per share."
From the article: "And the bank is converting the rest of its preferred stock - that it paid $10 million for - into 740,740 shares of SCO common presumably to dump it on the public market. Presumably too it won't sell the stock immediately since the conversion cost it $13.50 a share, more than double what SCO's been selling for."
Always good to see quality journalism. That $13.50 is per share of *preferred stock,* which originally sold for $1000.
Here's the math:
They're cashing out 10,000 shares of preferred for 740,740 shares of regular. Regular is 5.16 now, which is about what it would be worth at conversion - bringing them $3,822,218. This also means their shares of preferred stock are worth $3822/share right now. It will cost $13.50/*preferred* share - not common share as claimed by the article - to convert the 10,000 shares. This amounts to a 3.5% loss on the conversion, but that looks golden right now. It certainly would have made no sense if the $13.50 were per common share, as the article mistakenly claimed. In other words, they didn't pay a $13.50 fee to sell a $5 stock.
Also of interest - the purchase price of the stock was $10,000,000. Given the return of $3.8M, that means that they bought their stock at a price equivalent to $13.57/share of common stock. Probably looked good at one time...to someone.
...laptops? Would be really useful for those of us who want linux on those, or who have Windows site licenses for personal machines and would rather not pay twice.
Not only is the sample to small so is the brain of the guy that tried it. The error "no floppies found" is from the bios of his mother board not from linux. Calling this guy a geek is like calling Al Gore the inventor of the internet.
Yeah, I bet that was his BIOS shutting down after not finding a floppy.o. Also explains why the SAME HARDWARE worked with Windows. Dipshit.
I think Mandrake is a good way to get a lot of people using Linux. It's polished GUI is good for proving what Linux can be when you don't need command line control.
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It's not so much who chose the title as who's currently the asshole. Penguin just changed the name of the book; Tarbox has a creep of a lawyer who's harassing Katie Jones.
So currently it looks like Tarbox's lawyer is the ass here. If that doesn't reflect Tarbox, she needs a new lawyer.
Hrm... I think if you read a bit more carefully, as you'd see that she is located in the UK... I don't think that USPTO searches will help in that case.
It doesn't matter that she's in the UK because 1) Penguin's the one claiming rights (and they'd register everywhere if necessary, being an international company), 2) these things are generally protected by international treaty and 3), I couldn't find it in the UK either.
Seems like Penguin doesn't have the rights they think they do. And I don't believe book titles are automatically trademarked - I've seem some that were, making me believe the rest likely aren't by default.
Considering the whole point is she was a kid who got abused by a pedophile, I think the longest thing she probably ever wrote was a social studies term paper.
Can you say ghostwriter?
She probably won't take this to court from her own statements on the matter, so a nice evil PR campaign might work really well. Especially since she shouldn't face any of the "cybersquatter" rules that get domains turned over - after all, she 1) registered it practically in the stone age (1996, before Katie T. was molested or whatever), and 2) did so in good faith, using it for a personal site before it became useless as such.
Penguin clearly hasn't acted in good faith, I see no reason why she should. Goatse it is!
Anyone know of a large island that is well connected to the Internet? ...offhand I'd say Australia. ;)
First, that would only make sense the other way around - it would undermine the process if Real found a way to get Apple's media easily working on a non-locked-down player (not to mention which this is possible anyway). Getting more music to work on the ipod doesn't undermine anything from a DRM standpoint.
And competition is a good thing. If this undercuts apple from a market share standpoint 1) that's good, because it means Real brought something to the table to compete with apple, and 2) it means that customers are still getting record-company-approved music from Real. Note this isn't about piracy, as one can encode pirated music and play that on your ipod anyway. This is about getting another DRM'd format working on the ipod, which record companies can't but love. In other words, this is in no way bad for the industry OR consumers. It's only bad for apple's monopoly.
I know the pro-apple crowd here thinks that only Apple can bring music to the masses, but their (admittedly very good) first foray into music only buys them time. Expecting all other companies to hand them a permanant monopoly is absolutely mindless. Expecting all content to be explicitly tied to a specific hardware platform is pretty dumb; expecting the opposite (as you and Apple do) is indefensible.
Disclaimer: I'm an apple owner. But it doesn't mean I have to rubber-stamp everything the company does.
We shall see - first, I think Apple will be able to convince judges that their device doesn't run "software" in the traditional sense. My DVD player runs some software too...kind of...and we all see how that one plays out. I think they'll easily get around any "software compatibility" considerations. Second, they're bigger and their lawyers can beat up Real's, so that's what really matters here.
From the company's perspective, they've got to preserve the thing they got going on. What if they let it go and then MS buys Real?
That's an interesting consideration. Yeah, that should give Apple enough motivation.
That makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it makes too much sense for it to be legal these days. If Real officially "decrypted" or "reverse engineered" anything to get this hack working (like, say, a BIOS), then Apple can wave the spectre of the DMCA at them, as the article mentions. In fact, I'd say Apple has a decent shot of winning, and a great shot of using the threat of litigation to beat Real into submission.
I mean, Christ on a crutch, it's a pretty simple device... Not like every electronics company hasn't already made something similar. It shouldn't be too difficult at all to make something iPod compatible.
There you go being all logical again. You're going to have to work on that if you want to improve your grasp of the current American legal system. ;)
As a bit of an aside, how much more evidence will it take to convince Congress that no, really, the DMCA is completely anticompetitive? We have printer cartridges, DVD's, PS2 mod chips, this...what next? Is the entire concept of competition for aftermarket support a myth these days?
So I got 9/10 because MS is an even bigger bunch of assholes than I'd have thought. Wow.
First, as already mentioned, Rambus won. So that kind of nixes your point. Fortunately, that was about patents - not copyrights - and additionally, the committee that SCO and Novell was a part of actually granted a license.
But that's slack. No bloat. Anywhere. You want it bloated, punk, you put it in your frikking self.
A bit of thread if not topic, but any idea which "laws" this violates? Just Pauli, or others? Is this "information" bit tied to Hawking's proving that black holes aren't singularities, or are they different points?
...get an extra 1GB stick of RAM, you'll need it. That dripping is the sound of your memory leaking away.
What a bunch of Tony Robbinsish buzzword, feel-good crap. Nobody outside of protesters gives a shit about protesters unless they're breaking/disrupting shit. And if they do that, they lose public sympathy and thus their effectiveness.
Policy change, when it occurs, comes from effective people who get in the faces - literally - of policy makers. It comes from people who can lead real movements, not this hippie protest crap. If you want to make a difference, do so. But don't feel like you shouldn't feel guilty about doing nothing because you marched somewhere. That shit doesn't accomplish anything.
I really don't mean to seem flip - I am in the job market, so I know how hard it is to find such a job - but this might be time to look for another job. When companies start down this road, it's a sign of one (or two) of two things: 1) an insufferable, micromanaging, pennywise/pound-foolish tight-assed, non-caring boss, or 2) a company that's in such dire financial straits that they're looking for any avenue to save money. You don't want to work for a boss like that, and if the company is in such financial trouble in a generally improving economy, they're not in good shape.
If it were me, I'd start looking for a job, updating the resume, etc. After I started finding job prospects, I'd be tempted to tell them that since I used broadband primarily for work, I'm dropping it. See how they respond.
But I agree with you, pissing off your employer is never a good idea, and when you don't have another job lined up, it's a really bad idea.
As for you marching, whatever makes you feel better. If it did, it was logical. If you really think you made a difference in policy decisions, you didn't.
I would have owned a mac years before I finally bought one had they been more affordable. What this comes down to is market segmentation - the ability to maintain margins at the high end without abandoning the low end. Doing this effectively is unquestionably a good thing.
If Apple neglects the low end, it is because they don't think they can maintain margins on their better toys if they go for the cheaper market.
But at the point where there are millions of people who would legitimately get a mac if there was a cheaper one available...well...
And again, I say this as a powerbook owner.
First, people say this every damned time an improvement is made to a GUI. If anybody listened, we'd all still be using CLI exclusively. Second, most people using their 3 GHz machine for office work most certainly DO have the spare cycles.
Additionally, it looks like the improvements will really make a usability difference in how we interact with the UI. Keeping notes on an application window, tilting the windows to keep most of the perceptual information (btw, using foreshortening to effectively compress windows is a great idea), making multiple desktops more perceptual, etc are all good ideas that will help people interact more intelligently with their programs.
I think this is a great start, and with some tightening and more well-implemented ideas, I can't wait to see this in a mainstream OS.
I wonder if Goldstine heard about the British one and knew that we needed one too?
In general, the Brit version was a good bit less powerful and dedicated to it's purpose - not so much of a "computer" as we'd think of them, more like a very complicated, electronic adding machine.
Not to take away from the accomplishment though - brilliant and served its purpose rather well (obviously, since I write this post in English not Deutsch).
That's certainly not what they represent, and they actually go out of their way not to seem biased or bought.
Incidentally, if you look at other large sponsors of these agencies, you'll see other funding sources they have in common besides Microsoft. It's not like MS is the sole, driving force behind these organizations.
No one's claiming that MS is the sole client of these companies. The main point is just that 1) These think tanks are shills, and 2) The groups saying nice things about MS are paid by MS.
They're kind of like hookers - they'll "satisfy" whoever pays them enough.
If your boss puts more faith in a sponsored ad than your recommendation, you'd best be checking Monster pretty soon. Also, linuxtoday isn't really the best place to send newbies to learn about linux anyway.
As far as the rest of us, it seems to me that linuxtoday trusts its reader base enough to realize the FUD for what it is. Personally, I love the irony.
The only question is will it ever compromise their journalistic integrity? I doubt it.
From the article: "And the bank is converting the rest of its preferred stock - that it paid $10 million for - into 740,740 shares of SCO common presumably to dump it on the public market. Presumably too it won't sell the stock immediately since the conversion cost it $13.50 a share, more than double what SCO's been selling for."
Always good to see quality journalism. That $13.50 is per share of *preferred stock,* which originally sold for $1000.
Here's the math:
They're cashing out 10,000 shares of preferred for 740,740 shares of regular. Regular is 5.16 now, which is about what it would be worth at conversion - bringing them $3,822,218. This also means their shares of preferred stock are worth $3822/share right now. It will cost $13.50/*preferred* share - not common share as claimed by the article - to convert the 10,000 shares. This amounts to a 3.5% loss on the conversion, but that looks golden right now. It certainly would have made no sense if the $13.50 were per common share, as the article mistakenly claimed. In other words, they didn't pay a $13.50 fee to sell a $5 stock.
Also of interest - the purchase price of the stock was $10,000,000. Given the return of $3.8M, that means that they bought their stock at a price equivalent to $13.57/share of common stock. Probably looked good at one time...to someone.
...laptops? Would be really useful for those of us who want linux on those, or who have Windows site licenses for personal machines and would rather not pay twice.
Yeah, I bet that was his BIOS shutting down after not finding a floppy.o. Also explains why the SAME HARDWARE worked with Windows. Dipshit.
I thought that was what Lindows was for.